No. 1:LeBron bloodied in Heat’s win over Thunder — The Miami Heat were en route to an eventual 103-81 thrashing of the Oklahoma City Thunder at Chesapeake Energy Arena and LeBron James drove to the basket midway through the fourth quarter. James got popped in the face by OKC’s Serge Ibaka as he made his move and finished at the rim with a flush. But after the dunk, James crumpled to the floor and was bleeding profusely from his nose. Our Jeff Caplan was on the scene and reports that James is fine and cleared concussion tests from the injury:

LeBron James left Thursday night’s showdown against the Thunder midway through the fourth quarter after getting clobbered in the nose on his way to completing a highlight-reel play at the rim.Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said James’ nose was swollen and bleeding, but confirmed that he passed concussion tests. Asked if James had X-rays on his nose, Spoelstra would only say that his superstar will be checked out Friday back in Miami. The Heat just finished a six-game road trip and don’t play again until Sunday against Chicago.

“He’s got a swollen nose right now, it’s bleeding. We’ll evaluate him when we get back to Miami,” Spoelstra said. “It’s sore, he took a shot; probably should have been at the free throw line after that, but he was aggressive and it was a heck of an attack right there. He got hit pretty good though in the nose, so we’ll just have to see when we get back.”

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With the fourth-quarter clock ticking down to the six-minute mark, James drove to the basket and appeared to get walloped in the nose as he blew through the lane. James soared across the front of the rim, left to right, against Thunder power forward Serge Ibaka looking for a right-handed slam, Ibaka kept him far enough away that James couldn’t stretch far enough for the dunk. High above the rim, James still managed to score before crashing to the floor.

Game action resumed at the Thunder’s end as James squirmed on the Heat’s baseline. It wasn’t until play stopped on an OKC travel call that Heat guard Ray Allen made it back to the other end and was first to reach James. As soon as he saw him, Allen waved for the trainers.

Heat players circled around James and everybody in Miami black held their breath.

“You just don’t know what it is,” Spoelstra said. “I’m like everybody else, you’re used to seeing him like Superman and get up and sprint back even after tough hits and tough falls, so you knew something was up.”

No. 2:Report: Magic reach buyout with Davis— Glen “Big Baby” Davis came to the Orlando Magic in the summer of 2011 via a sign-and-trade deal with the Celtics that sent Brandon Bass to Boston. After Dwight Howard was traded from Orlando to the L.A. Lakers in the 2012 offseason, Davis got off to a solid start last season with the Magic. But injuries derailed most of 2012-13 for him after 25 games and this season was marred by his well-publicized blowup late at night at an Orlando-area hotel. The Magic have one of the youngest teams in the league and have decided to buyout Davis to free up more minutes for younger players, writes Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel:

The Magic and Davis have reached a buyout agreement that will end the burly power forward’s tumultuous tenure with the franchise.

“It became apparent that they felt it was necessary to try to allow their younger players more time on the court and were in a full rebuild mode,” said Davis’ agent, John Hamilton.

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Davis was under contract for $6.4 million this season and was due to earn $6.6 million from the Magic next season.Hamilton would not disclose the terms of the buyout.

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Davis, 28, didn’t figure into the Magic’s long-term plans.

The move subtracts Davis’ well-documented volatility from the locker room, where there are impressionable youngsters.

Parting ways with him also allows the team to allocate more playing time to second-year big men Kyle O’Quinn and Andrew Nicholson. The team also could shift Tobias Harris from small forward to power forward, which would enable coach Jacque Vaughn to utilize a three-guard lineup in which Victor Oladipo, Jameer Nelson and Arron Afflalo play simultaneously.

Magic officials had trade talks with multiple teams about Davis in recent weeks but couldn’t work out a deal before the 2013-14 NBA trade deadline expired Thursday afternoon.

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Davis enjoyed highs and endured lows during his Magic tenure, which began in Dec. 2011 following a sign-and-trade deal with the Boston Celtics.

For most of the 2011-12 season, Davis backed up Ryan Anderson and struggled to earn the playing time he wanted.

On Feb. 3, 2012, Davis spoke up during a team shootaround and got into a screaming match with then-coach Stan Van Gundy; after Van Gundy dismissed Davis from practice, Davis damaged a wall as he stormed into the Magic locker room.

That season, Davis also had a verbal altercation with a fan in Portland, Ore., before a game.

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The Magic made Davis a co-captain for the 2012-13 season, and Davis embraced the role and flourished under Vaughn. Davis helped lead the rebuilding Magic to a 12-13 start. But Davis dislocated his left shoulder during the team’s 25th game and later fractured a bone in his left foot. His injuries helped doom the Magic to an 8-49 finish to their season.

Early this season, while still rehabbing his foot, Davis had an off-court incident at a downtown Orlando motel. After a discussion with a front-desk clerk, Davis threw one of the motel’s keyboards against a wall. Davis was never charged with a crime.

The Magic tried hard to move Davis before Thursday’s trade deadline but were unable to find a deal to unload him. The Los Angeles Clippers are the frontrunners to sign Davis, league sources said. Clippers GM and coach Doc Rivers coached Davis with the Boston Celtics and had discussions with Orlando in recent days about acquiring him. The Brooklyn Nets, who like the Clippers are searching for a backup big man, have signifcant interest in Davis too, league sources said. Also interested, according to one of the sources, are the Miami Heat, San Antonio Spurs and Golden State Warriors.

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No. 3:Report: Nets mull signing Collins — Veteran center Jason Collins hasn’t played in an NBA game since April 17, 2013, but the Brooklyn Nets are reportedly considering bringing him in on a 10-day deal. ESPN.com’s Ohm Youngmisuk and Marc Stein report that Collins, who made history last year when he became the first openly gay active NBA player, would theoretically fill one of the team’s two open roster spots. Brooklyn’s lone trade before yesterday’s trade deadline was to send guard Jason Terry and forward Reggie Evans to Sacramento for Marcus Thornton in a deal that took place on Feb. 19. The Nets were unable to land any frontcourt players, though, thus leading them to potentially add Collins, who played for the Nets from 2001-07:

The Brooklyn Nets are giving strong consideration to signing Jason Collins to a 10-day contract that would position the free-agent center to become the NBA’s first active openly gay player, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.

Sources told ESPN.com that the Nets, after letting Thursday’s trade deadline pass without making a deal for Los Angeles Lakers forward Jordan Hill, have identified Collins as a prime candidate to fill one of their two open roster spots and bolster a depleted frontcourt rotation via a 10-day deal.

No final decision has been made, but the Nets on Thursday night confirmed an earlier ESPN.com report that Collins was auditioned by the team in a private workout in Los Angeles earlier this week to assess the state of the 35-year-old’s game.

Nets general manager Billy King acknowledged the workout in an evening conference call with local reporters after the passing of the trade deadline but said he did not attend it in person. When asked to share the feedback he received on Collins, King said: “He’s in shape.”

“He’s one of the names on the list,” King said of Collins. “We will look at anybody that’s a free agent that’s big that’s out there. We’re looking at any guys that are free agents and he’s one of the guys. But we’ve got other guys that we’ll look at.”

“We’re going to look to add a guy,” King said, “that we feel will help us.”

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King scoffed at the suggestion that Collins was being considered for a 10-day deal for mere publicity reasons, saying: “We’re going to bring in a basketball player. It’s not about marketing or anything like that. … We are trying to get a guy in who can play basketball at this point. That’s my focus.”

Yet King did concede that the aforementioned media blitz that would likely engulf the Nets, at least to start, is something that had to be accounted for in the decision-making process.

“You look at it from every aspect when you add a player,” King said.

King went on to say that a well-rounded defender, as much an outright rebounding specialist, would appeal to the Nets, which would appear to enhances Collins’ chances of landing at least a 10-day deal given that his specialties are positioning, pick-sitting and post defense. No Net could use a hand more than Garnett, who has been starting at center in place of the injured Lopez and anchoring the Nets’ defense but could find himself rested in several games during the regular-season stretch run given Brooklyn’s eight remaining back-to-backs.

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No. 4: Failed Paul trade to Lakers hurt many teams’ rebuild plans — It is perhaps known as the most famous offseason trade that wasn’t in recent memory. The Los Angeles Lakers’ failed attempt to pick up Chris Paul from the then-New Orleans Hornets before the start of the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season put a kink not only in that season, but in L.A.’s plans for its next great era of hoops. Bleacher Report’s Kevin Ding, who covered the Lakers for the Orange County Register at the time, has an excellent, long look at how that failed trade affected not just L.A., but all the teams involved:

Twenty-six months have passed since the Lakers had the deal done to acquire Paul from the New Orleans Hornets in a three-team trade sending Pau Gasol to the Houston Rockets and Lamar Odom to the Hornets. As much as has happened to the team in the past two years, CP3 going in and out still remains the missed shot at the forefront of the minds of Lakers staffers, executives and fans.

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The Houston Rockets are in town Wednesday night to play the Lakers, and if the trade had gone through, the Rockets would be altogether different now—presumably led not by James Harden and Dwight Howard, but by Gasol.

Instead, Gasol still sits here by the shore, sweating the Thursday NBA trade deadline as the time the Lakers might finally ship him out.

The question of whether Howard would’ve become a Laker at all and might still be there is just one of many that are fascinating to consider. At heart, though, there is no arguing how poorly things have turned out for the Lakers without Paul.

A clear parallel universe was established…and then never allowed to exist.

How would that alternate reality have looked? Rarely do we get to do analysis that is both prospective and retrospective, but let’s take an in-depth look and figure it out.

The Lebron/Durant matchup came to a close,
Lebron’s team dominated, say it aint so.
But it’s not over, in the NBA finals they’ll be foes,
Even if Ibaka went and broke Lebron James’ nose.

Big baby is apparently toxic to his team,
Letting him go was Orlando’s big dream.
Giving more playing time to their younger players,
They still won’t win unfortunately, said the naysayers.

The Nets are planning on signing one more guy,
Don’t they have enough already? They like to buy.
They already are way over their cap space, but no big deal,
The owner’s a billionaire, yes that’s for real.

I don’t see how the Chris Paul trade hurt other teams rebuild plans,
I really just see the Lakers hurt and no other clan.
But I do see that it hurt the NBA as a whole,
One less storied franchise missing in the Playoffs leaves a hole.